


embarrassed by (its honesty)

by Anonymous



Series: steter week 2k15 [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Bad Jokes, Bad Puns, Concert Band, Conductor - Freeform, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Making Out, Musicians, Office Sex, Saxophone, trombone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:21:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4250895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles decides that the only way he’s going to make it through the next few hours is if he pretends that Scott doesn’t exist and that he can’t feel Lydia’s disapproving gaze, despite the fact that she’s clear on the other side of the arrangement.</p><p>“Considering how you acted leading up to Allison, there’s no way I’m letting this slide,” Scott says.</p><p>Even as he’s saying it, he knows he sounds petulant but he can’t help the, “I haven’t even done <i>anything</i>.”</p><p>Scott gives Stiles the same look he’s been giving him since they were four and Stiles was convinced that there were werewolves at the bottom of the sandpit (and damned if he wasn’t going to find them).</p>
            </blockquote>





	embarrassed by (its honesty)

**Author's Note:**

> an unholy mix of whiplash and sound! euphonium
> 
> fight me

Scott does something he rarely does and smirks.

“Shut up,” Stiles hisses under his breath, adjusting his stand.

Scott says nothing but continues to look insufferably smug, and Stiles scowls back at him.

Stiles decides that the only way he’s going to make it through the next few hours is if he pretends that Scott doesn’t exist and that he can’t feel Lydia’s disapproving gaze, despite the fact that she’s clear on the other side of the arrangement.

“Considering how you acted leading up to Allison, there’s no way I’m letting this slide,” Scott says.

Even as he’s saying it, he knows he sounds petulant but he can’t help the, “I haven’t even done anything.”

Scott gives Stiles the same look he’s been giving him since they were four and Stiles was convinced that there were werewolves at the bottom of the sandpit (and damned if he wasn’t going to find them).

“You’re wearing your ‘fuck me’ jeans!” Scott laughs on the verge of hysterics -- just in time for the rest of the band to fall silent.

Scott clears his throat and turns back to his trombone and Stiles tries and fails to feel vindicated, largely due to the fact that he’s colouring embarrassingly fast. He swivels round to stare somewhere between his feet, and taps at his keys.

Conductor Hale is giving the two of them an unimpressed look. In their defense, he gives everything and everyone an unimpressed look which is part of what makes him so good at his job. On the other hand, this particular look falls somewhere between ‘cashier has no change’ and ‘dry cleaners lost my favourite suit’.

Not that Stiles has a favourite suit. He has one horrifically expensive one (Hale would allow no less) that he wears during performances but that’s it. Conductor Hale, on the other hand, has several suits that he seems to wear on some sort of rotation, even in summer, (and Stiles has to say that it’s a pleasure to watch him strip down).

He arches an eyebrow from where he stands by the door. “Stilinski, McCall,” he says. “What do we call people who hang around musicians?”

“Vocalists,” they mutter in unison.

“So are you here to talk or play?”

“Play.”

“Because this isn’t a choir, it’s....?”

“An ensemble,” they sigh.

Hale looks as insufferably pleased with himself as usual. Stiles has no idea why he finds it so hot.

Conductor Hale goes to stand behind the podium and Stiles pointedly ignores the amused glances of the other saxophones. Lydia will probably want to have ‘a talk’ with him later, but that’s something Stiles is sure he can do without.

It was bad enough when she took him aside one afternoon a few years ago to tell him that whatever weird obsession he had with her, he should get over it and quick. She already had a boyfriend (the dick cymbalist that moved across the country last year) and his crush was both painfully obvious and distracting the rest of the band.

Mortifying as it had been at the time, he’s glad she did it. He’ll probably always have a bit of a something for her, but he’s also terrified of her, and he’s been reliably informed that abject fear is not a sound basis for a relationship. At least they’re friends now. He thinks. He hopes.

Conductor Hale opens his score and gives them a hard look. “Are we all in tune?”

Stiles shakes off the conversation puts the mouthpiece to his lips. He forms his embouchure and as a unit they wait out four beats before releasing a steady Bb. They hold it for twelve then let it fade.

Hale taps his baton against his stand and they all subconsciously straighten up.

“From one-one-two,” he says, swings one, two, three, four.

They launch into Crescent Moon which Stiles both loves and hates because it’s a beautiful piece of music but the fingering is also really fucking difficult and it’s probably a bad idea to be thinking about fingering and fucking while he has his eyes trained on Conductor Hale because he’s going to start imagining what those hands would feel like if they were stretching him open, twisting inside him until he was begging for it--

He comes in almost a quarter of a beat late.

Everyone who hears him do it starts to fade out because they know what’s coming and Stiles tries to shrink back in his seat as Scott snickers behind him.

Conductor Hale’s hands form a perfect pitch as he intones, “Halt.” He gaze flits around the room, settling briefly on Stiles before moving on. He lets the silence ring out for a few moments, just long enough for everyone to get uncomfortable. “Now,” he begins, “I’m going to give whoever fucked up fifteen seconds to admit to it.”

The thing is, Conductor Hale always knows who it was, somehow but he takes a perverse amount of pleasure in making people admit to their mistakes.. He’s an asshole but he’s a good conductor, even if no one really understands why. If his sister didn’t run the conservatoire he probably would have been fired by now.

Stiles has no idea why he likes him.

He raises his hand, “First sax,” he says.

Having Hale’s icy blue eyes focused on him makes something simultaneously warm and cold shiver down his back.

Hale smiles and it’s feral and dangerous and Stiles has to remind himself that this is not the time to be thinking about sex. “Give me one I haven’t heard before Stilinski.”

Stiles sighs. “What do you call perfect pitch?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Hale replies, his voice pitched higher with false innocence. “What do you call perfect pitch?”

Stiles sighs again. “When the saxophone lands exactly in the middle of the dumpster.”

Hale never laughs at these jokes, but a corner of his lips twitch up. “Trombones, from one-three-five.”

 

* * *

 

The remainder of the runthrough is a mixture of the awful joke Conductor Hale likes them to tell about their own instruments and playing from points that appear to be randomly selected with a random selection of instruments.

Peter never says anything particularly encouraging but  he’s more than willing to let them know when they screw up, so as long as he isn’t saying anything, they’re probably doing pretty well.

Aside from a few slip-ups at the beginning, they have a pretty good play-through at the end, despite receiving practically no constructive directive whatsoever.

Somehow, still, when it’s over, Stiles feels like they’ve been really productive. Thus is the mystery.

They dismantle their stands because they’re the last group to use this particular room on Tuesdays, and start to pack away their instruments.

“Stilinkski,” Conductor Hale says, just before he leaves, “my office.”

The other saxs ‘ooh’ and Stiles rolls his eyes and prays that he hasn’t been kicked out or demoted to second chair or something equally awful. No offense to Ethan or whatever, but Stiles could play musical circles around him.

He takes of his equipment, dismantles his sax and latches it up inside its case. It’s heavy as fuck to carry around but at least he doesn’t play contrabass.

“What do you think he wants?” Scott asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

Stiles tries to give him a disgusted look but it probably looks something more akin to hopeful.

He jumps when Lydia materialises behind him, flute tucked neatly under her arm. He forgets she has Big Band after this.

“Just keep it in your pants,” she says, “last thing we need is one of the idiot twins getting promoted because you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself.”

“Hey!” The twins look almost upset. Stiles echoes the sentiment.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “No jumping Hale.”

Lydia gives him a look like she doesn’t believe him, but she leaves nonetheless. Stiles makes his way out of the practice room, down the corridor and to Conductor Hale’s office. He knocks.

“Come in,” Conductor Hale says, and Stiles does what he can to erase every shard of schoolboy porn he’s ever watched from his memory. He’s an adult damnit.

He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him.

Conductor Hale doesn’t look up from where he’s making notes on the score and Stiles takes a moment to look at his surroundings. He’s been in here before, right around when he was applying to be a part of Hale’s ensemble and he can’t see if anything has changed since then. It’s as ruthlessly impersonal as he remembers it being.

When he looks back at Hale, he finds he’s already being watched and flushes, wondering how long for.

Hale sets his pen down. “Are you always this distracted?” he says, standing up.

“Uh, sometimes.,” Stiles says. “ADHD, you know?”

“Mmm,” Hale hums, “your file says.”

Stiles tries not to wonder too hard what it is he’s doing there. Hale steps closer and closer until they’re maybe half a foot apart and the part of Stiles’ brain that isn’t preoccupied with staring at him warns that if he gets any closer, Stiles is going to start hyperventilating.

“Uh,” he repeats.

“‘Fuck me’ jeans?” Hale says, one eyebrow quirked, tone amused. His eyes drop to the crotch of Stiles’ pants before making their way back up to Stiles’ now fluorescent face. “Well, I suppose they’re rather...fitting.”

“Uh,” is the only thing that Stiles has time to get out of his mouth before Hale’s lips slot against his and all higher brain function decides to shut down.

His mouth is incendiary and Stiles isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to stay standing for when Hale’s lips are hot and wet and he’s doing things with his tongue that Stiles wasn’t aware were possible and that he’s becoming convinced should be illegal.

A hand is tangled in his hair and fingers are digging into his hips. They’re probably the only thing keeping him standing and if Stiles needed to be any harder the thought that Hale is strong enough to take his weight would have done it for him. Lips trail down to his neck and Peter sucks as he presses their hips together and Stiles’ stutter forward in an aborted thrust.

The moan that escapes from between his lips is a little concerning, and as he clutches at Peter’s shoulders and shakes apart, he hopes distantly that the room is soundproof. “Peter,” he cries, already horrifically close to edge.

Peter nips at his throat, and despite the groan it draws from him, Stiles understands the reproach. “Hale,” he tries again.

Another bite, closer to his collarbone this time. His Dad’s going to think he got mauled and wow this isn’t the time to be thinking about his father -- unless Peter’s into that, of course, and let’s face it, he probably is.

“Conductor,” he tries, and he’s rewarded by Hale doing something with his hands in Stiles’ trousers (and when did they even get there?) that has him sobbing and writhing as he comes.

When he’s feeling a little more coherent, lethargic and sweet in the haze of the afterglow, and slumped against Hale, he can’t help but laugh.

“What?” Hale asks, signature expression of his face.

“Trust you to risk your job getting one of your players off,” he says.

Conductor Hale gives him another look, somewhere between unimpressed (as usual) and ‘I thought you were smarter than that’.

Stiles laughs in a way he’ll deny to his dying day was a giggle and snuggles even closer. “I should have known,” he said, shaking his head in mock seriousness.

Peter bit at his ear, hard enough to make Stiles yelp. “Well, really, so should I.”

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if they're ooc, no one made you read this
> 
> unedited bc it was written in less than two hours and I'm lazy
> 
> first steter fic, I blame the chatzy as is only proper
> 
> I made a lot of things up, I am musical but I've never played sax or been in concert band so
> 
> kind of sorry if anyone is offended by these jokes
> 
> title from 'no lies, just love' by bright eyes
> 
> anonymous posting bc i'm a terrible fic writer, I just don't want anyone to know how terrible
> 
> if you notice any mistakes, please let me know. thank you


End file.
